Katarina Livljanić

My project for the Villa Albertine is a creative research, culminating in a performance, focusing on the medieval music revival through the fascinating figure of Yvette Guilbert, Parisian café-concert singer, actress, and storyteller, between the Belle époque Paris and New York of the post-Gilded Age. Her personality transcends the borders between the elegant atmosphere of high-brow Parisian salons and the more low-brow café-concerts from the beginning of the 20th century, among poets and musicians inspired by the medieval and ancient worlds.

The part of her life which is the most relevant to my project in the period from 1915 to 1922, when she lived in the United States, mainly in New York: she started as a performer in music halls and later became a respected artist involved in the revival of French medieval music.

In 1919, she founded a music and theater performance school for young women in New York. In collaboration with French musicologist Jean Beck, she performed medieval troubadour and trouvère songs, with piano accompaniment, in Carnegie Hall and on international tours. In 1922 she brought her pupils from NYC to Paris where they performed “admirable gothic reconstructions” in the Salle Gaveau.

My main idea is not to make a historical reconstruction of Y. Guilbeert’s art. Through my work in New York, my goal is to propose a new vision of medieval music performance through the prism of the early 20th-century intersection between musicology and cabaret, and draw inspiration from the artists of the Belle Epoque who dared to play with the past in such a delicious and liberating way. Through my research and creation, I would love to allow these sacred, erotic, and humorous stories to be alive again, in a world where singing, speaking, and acting are the indistinguishable faces of the same human voice.

In my research and creative process, several institutions in New York City play a crucial role:

– The Carnegie Hall archival collection of concert programs, posters, audio, and video recordings will allow me to locate the artefacts of Yvette Guilbert’s concerts of French medieval music in the 1910-1920-ties.

– Some of the historical recordings of Yvette Guilbert’s songs, used in her teaching methods, have been made by Columbia Gramophone Company of New York City.

– New York City, with its vibrant early music scene is a uniquely interesting experimental lab-like field for creating intersections and encounters between early music and music-hall vocal types and aesthetics.

– The Historical Performance Program of the Julliard School, with its specialized studies and early music experts, represent a rich and stimulating possibility for encounters and exchange of ideas.

– Last, but not least: the final result of my project will culminate in a concert programme rooted in the encounter of the Middle Ages and the Belle époque. It involves dimensions of historical research and creation, it focuses on the study of the cosmopolitan spirit between Paris and New York at the beginning of the 20th century, and more than anything – it is built around the pillars of the café-concert and music hall approach to performance: irony, elegance, and humor.